


Winter's Work

by SonriaCat



Series: Tales from Winter Camp [20]
Category: Earth 2 (TV 1994)
Genre: 100 situations, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-19
Updated: 2017-11-19
Packaged: 2019-03-08 13:21:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 797
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13459110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SonriaCat/pseuds/SonriaCat
Summary: Stopping for the winter means more work, not less.





	Winter's Work

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: Full

Morgan pulled his headset off with a sigh, turning to face his companion. “I’ve managed to squeeze a bit more data compression in there,” he informed her. “But you’re still going to have to start making some decisions, Julia. If you keep this up, you’re going to fill up the system memory before winter’s through.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”

“If you think I’m saying it’s time to decide what information’s important enough to keep and what’s going to have to be overwritten, you are.”

“But it’s _all_ important! There’s just so much information about this planet that needs cataloging. And I never thought we’d run out of system memory.”

“Yeah, well, you’re going to, unless you can uplink to an archive out there somewhere. Maybe you can find one. You know, with all those Station contacts you had before. Aren’t there satellites in orbit?”

The young woman’s face fell, and Morgan realized he’d gone too far. “Look, I’m sorry. I just don’t know how much more room I’m going to be able to create for you. The scientific database is already five times larger than anything else.”

She kept her face turned away. “All right. I’ll start looking for duplications and errors. At least that’ll be something we can take out.”

“Julia,” he said, contrite. “What I said. That was out of line.”

“You said you were sorry,” she muttered. “I believe you. That’s enough. Thanks, Morgan, I’ll take it from here.”

Shaking his head, he exited the tent and surveyed the camp before him. When they’d made the decision to stop for the winter, he’d thought there would be less work, not more. To his surprise, the opposite had turned out to be true. Everyone was either overhauling and upgrading their equipment, or gathering information they thought would be useful once spring came and they were back on their way to New Pacifica.

And, as the person most skilled with their computer systems, it fell to him to make sure they had enough information resources to store all of that data.

 _It’s not like you’re completely innocent of using information resources, Martin_ , he reminded himself. He’d deleted most of the personalized VR programs a while back, keeping only three that he’d spent far too much time working on to be willing to give up easily. But between what they’d learned during the ill-fated attempt at mining, and the remote studies they were trying to do on the river, he still had plenty listed under his name.

The problem was that according to Yale, winter was barely half over. Morgan began pondering alternatives as he made his way toward the bio-dome, and as a result didn’t see Danziger until he’d nearly tripped over the other man.

“Watch it,” he snarled. “Bad enough I just lost three chips out of this. I can’t afford to lose any more if we want clean water.”

“Chips? You mean computer chips? In that thing? What is it, a water filter?”

“It is. But whoever designed it thought it needed to be able to _analyze_ the impurities in addition to removing them. I’ve bypassed as much of that as I can, but can’t get around it entirely.” He sat back on his heels, eyes narrowing. “What’s it to you?”

Morgan considered for a long moment. “What did you do with the computer memory that you bypassed? Is it just sitting there?”

“Yeah, except for the chips that’ve gone bad. Why?”

His mind was off and running. “Do you have anything else that’s basically just ignoring its memory chips? Because if you do, I might have a use for them.”

“You talking about all that grousing you’ve been doing about information resources? Are you saying you could put stuff on those?”

“I might.” It’d be worth a try, anyway.

“Yeah, but I can’t completely bypass the operational routines.”

“Do you need to?” he asked. “Maybe we could simply use the unused space to store the things we need to keep but don’t need immediate access to.”

Danziger was still frowning, but it had become thoughtful instead of belligerent. “It’d be a lot of work to reconfigure the chips. You sure you’re up to it?”

Morgan shrugged. “You’d prefer the alternative? And it’s not like there isn’t any work anyway. Our days have been a lot fuller than we’d ever imagined, haven’t they?”

“Yeah, I suppose.” He shook his head. “But I never thought I’d find myself agreeing with you about the need to work.”

Neither had Morgan, but the winter had been full of surprises. This one, though, seemed like it wasn’t going to be an unwelcome surprise. He could live with that. It certainly beat a winter full of nothing but boredom and free time.


End file.
